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Werthead, on 07 May 2019 - 05:21 PM, said:
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SE is a better writer than GGK. GGK is an excellent aesthetic writer. He does an unrivalled job painting the landscapes and the characters. The emotions gain real vibrancy and pathos. He is like a classical painter.
SE does a better job of making his worlds powerful and textured. They feel real and lived in. They feel natural.
And I have yet to see a single author more capable of evoking emotion by writing a single line for an almost unknown character. SE can do the most with the least.
SE does a better job of making his worlds powerful and textured. They feel real and lived in. They feel natural.
And I have yet to see a single author more capable of evoking emotion by writing a single line for an almost unknown character. SE can do the most with the least.
As much as I respect SE's immense imagination and the quality of his writing when he lines up all his ducks (which he hasn't done in a sustained fashion across an entire novel since MEMORIES OF ICE), he can also be highly sloppy and undisciplined as a writer, leaving behind masses of unresolved plotlines, shallow worldbuilding and purple prose. Erikson on form is fantastic, but alas his form has not been all there for some considerable time. I hope it returns in THE GOD IS NOT WILLING.
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Where is your review for Tigana? I don't see it in this forum.
I read TIGANA seven or eight years before I started the blog. It is in the re-read stack.
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Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Haruki Murakami
Magic realism is not really secondary world fantasy.
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or if you want literary cachet only within a stricter definition of SFF, China Mieville, Stephen Donaldson, and William Gibson.
Gibson is SF, Donaldson did his best work in SF (and his fantasy work since the second Covenant trilogy has been patchy at best).
Mieville is a good one. I didn't consider him since his last major adult fantasy novel (KRAKEN) was some considerable time ago, and his last secondary world epic fantasy (IRON COUNCIL in 2004!) is even older, but his canon is very strong.
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Authors like Liu Cixin and NK Jemison are approaching consideration for this group. JK Rowling also kept the English publishing industry afloat for a decade.
I haven't read Cixin yet. Jemison is almost there based on BROKEN EARTH, but her earlier two series were less accomplished. If she sustains that quality level from hereon out, yes, she's a strong contender, as is Kameron Hurley.
Rowling's commercial performance is irrelevant to the quality of her work.
Disagree regarding SE.
SE performs not in terms of a book but in terms of a series. A throwaway line in 1 book becomes important in another. Also I think the unresolved plotlines thing is a bit exaggerated given his collaboration with ICE. Frankly I rate TTH way over MoI as a book.
Also since you are giving importance to the secondary world aspect, SE's worldbuilding is head and shoulders above GGK. GGK is historical fiction with the special GGK sauce. SE yields to none in originality.
Re: Cixin - I find him to be massively overrated. I have read the three body series and its got paper thin characters, extremely implausible plotlines and some really strange thought going on.
Jemisin is superb of course. I like Hurley, and I could like her a lot more if she reined in that tendency of hers to go for maximum grossness.
